Beach nourishment in the United States

Abstract

Beach nourishment is a “soft” coastal erosion control strategy that involves the importation and emplacement of sand along dynamic shorelines in an attempt to stabilize and artificially maintain a minimum subaerial beach width. In the United States beaches are typically nourished to protect human economic development vulnerable to shoreline erosion/migration and coastal storms. While preferable to hard erosion control structures such as seawalls and groins, fiscal and economic issues have cast doubt on the efficacy of beach nourishment as an affordable, equitable and sustainable erosion response measure. Of particular concern are the delineation of costs and benefits, how costs and benefits are distributed and the possibility that storm damage reduction benefits – the economic force that drives nearly all beach nourishment projects – may never materialize. An accurate accounting of potential future costs must be combined with a pragmatic expectation of potential benefits before beach nourishment can be compared, let alone considered preferable, to non-traditional coastal erosion response measures such as retreat.